Cal’s Memorial Stadium is falling apart.
Concrete has fallen off, wooden seats have rotten away. The Hayward Fault line runs deep underneath the playing field, leaving fans wondering whether it’s themselves or Mother Nature who’s rocking the stadium. Cracks snake through its foundation.
If the 85-year-old stadium were in Southern California, it easily would have had the $140 million facelift it’s currently receiving long before it came to this.
When Oregon’s former offensive coordinator Jeff Tedford signed on to be Cal’s head coach starting in 2002, he even made sure there was a clause in his contract that said he could leave if construction hadn’t started to fix the old stadium.
It’s interesting, then, how the stadium has become a house of horrors for the Ducks since coach Tedford arrived.
Duck fans should hope that this time around, Oregon won’t see the ghosts.
You see, when Oregon goes to Memorial Stadium, it can be like walking into a haunted house. Sometimes things don’t seem to be what they are inside its 72,000-seat confines.
Games are lost – Oregon is 14-25-2 all-time there.
Wide-open passes are dropped – such as Keith Allen’s on fourth-down in 2004 that stopped the Ducks’ comeback.
Rankings are forgotten – such as when No. 11 Oregon found itself wondering what happened in 2006 after DeSean Jackson returned a punt for a touchdown and caught another. Cal won 45-24.
That was the game in which the Bears broke out their mustard-yellow tops for the first time, making Oregon’s uniforms look conservative for what was probably the only time all year. But fans won’t remember their team’s jerseys so much as how the Bears won.
In the interest of saving time, how about we just say they won convincingly.
That team, however, could be seen as one that hadn’t received its gut check yet. Still high off its wins over
Oklahoma and Arizona State, Cal – no slouch itself that game at No. 16 – put its best opening punch right on Oregon’s chin. Oregon never got up.
This team has.
It looked bad after the loss to USC, but it’s hard to argue that Oregon hasn’t shown marked improvement in each major category every week since.
Against UCLA, sophomore Jeremiah Masoli proved he could shoulder the rushing load.
Last weekend in the desert of Tempe, juniors Jairus Byrd and Walter Thurmond stopped Rudy Carpenter early with a pair of interceptions. Oregon’s red zone defense, in the middle of the pack nationally, showed up with the stop by Thurmond in the end zone.
Masoli showed he can throw, and the receivers – eight of them, in fact – proved that dropped passes could, or at least should, be a thing of the past.
The Touchdown Twins, junior LeGarrette Blount and senior Jeremiah Johnson, returned to full form, scoring two touchdowns each against the Sun Devils.
Whether or not you want to debate the merits of UCLA and Arizona State, the Ducks look as if they actually deserve to be tied at the top of the conference.
Then again, the Ducks haven’t walked inside Memorial Stadium yet.
Cal, too, has something going on. Tedford’s team rebounded after a loss to Arizona by beating UCLA last weekend. Without Justin Forsett and wide receiver DeSean Jackson, who helped Cal beat Oregon at Autzen Stadium last year for the first time since 1987, this team isn’t flashy. Sophomore Jahvid Best is workmanlike running the ball between the tackles. Redshirt sophomore Kevin Riley, from Beaverton, and redshirt senior Nate Longshore have done just enough to keep Cal tied for first place in the league.
The team that rolled over last season after losing its chance at a No. 1 ranking no longer resides in Berkeley. The program that lost every game against the Ducks from 1994 to 2003 no longer fears Oregon.
The Ducks should hope they don’t have any cracks in their lightning-yellow armor this time around.
After all, in Berkeley, you know they’ll find it.
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